Wounded
by Phoenixfyretail
Summary: Gwen, being herself, is dead set on succeeding on her mission, and in doing so, is severely wounded. What happens to her? And Carlos? Involves characters from my previous story Invasion. Read that first to know what the hell is going on. Rated M for: Blood, torture, language, and certain sexual situations.


Carlos and Gwen

I awake to a dingy, and dripping tin roof. I'm sore and aching all over, and my feet and hands are tied. My hands are tied to a pipe behind me and above my head. I look around, and discover that I'm kneeling on a dirt floor speckled with dark blood splatters. Carlos is less than 10 feet away from me, in the same position as me on the other side of the room. His frantic dark eyes meet mine.

"It's Vaas." He croaks out, and I notice that his mouth is bloody. His face is beaten black and blue, and he has several new cuts on his cheek and forehead. His hands are torn open, and so are his arms. His chest is a mass of new wounds too. Not enough to be life threatening, but damn close. I look down at myself.

I'm completely fine, just sore and bruised. My clothes are still on, but there is something more alarming in the room.

On a table in the corner, almost hidden in the dim light, is a very sharp knife, jammed into the chipped wood. The blade is still dripping dark blood. I look over to Carlos with wide eyes, and he gazes back, his dark eyes that were full of so much love and warmth, and happiness, now blank. He's lost all hope.

I begin to twist my wrists, feeling the rope burn and chafe my skin. I ignore it and begin to try and methodically pry my wrists free. After a few minutes, I manage to get them to gradually loosen. Carlos is watching with wide eyes, and those wide eyes of amazement melt into horror when Vaas walks in.

"Ahhh…. Awake now are we, motherfucking gringa?" He asks, his voice slurred slightly, almost as if he was high and slightly drunk at the same time. Which he probably was, now that I think about it. Shit.

I don't say anything back, but continue to try and slip the ropes away. I'm looking at Carlos, focusing on his terrified eyes. He's watching me as well, so neither of us notice when Vaas, faster than I would've thought possible, snatches up the knife and holds it to my throat.

"No, no, no, no…. We can't have any of that, now can we, you fucking gringa?" The sharp blade rests lightly over my jugular. One wrong move from me, or one deliberate one from him and I was a dead woman.

"Chica…" Carlos says softly. His head is bowed, and there are tears starting to form in his desperate eyes. He knows what's going to happen. And unfortunately, so do I. I look up, and at the same moment, the knife is in my shoulder.

I throw my head back in pain, a guttural cry of agony ripping from my throat. But I use the rest of my rational brain power and wrench my hands free from the ropes holding me captive.

"GWEN! YOU MOTHER FUCKING SON OF A BITCH… YOU FUCKING LET HER GO…" He starts to brutally insult Vaas in a tirade in Spanish. Neither one of them notice my free hands. Vaas is too busy staring at Carlos in utter surprise. I yank the knife out of my shoulder, and Vaas turns.

"This is from Jason Brody you son of a bitch." I growl, my shoulder pouring blood. The knife is now buried to the hilt in his throat, and Vaas collapses heavily to the ground, falling backward. I wrench the knife free, and turn to Carlos. I'm panting in pain now, my free hand clenched over the deep shoulder wound. I stumble over to him and cut him free, then I fall to my knees in front of him, blacking out from blood loss.

When I wake up again, I'm in Carlos's house. I'm nestled in his soft sheets, the blankets pulled up over my hips. My hand is warm, and I'm comfortable. I open my eyes fully, blinking in the sunlight. I am indeed in Carlos's room, and I look down at myself. I'm dressed in one of Carlos's skull shirts, and I'm not wearing any pants. My hair is loose and washed out, and… where's Carlos?

I look to my right, wincing at the pain in my left shoulder, and then I see him. He's curled up in a chair by my bed, hand holding mine, his head resting on the bed by my shoulder. He's sound asleep, and the various cuts and bruises don't look like they've been tended to very well. I sigh, and shake my head at this man, reaching over the best I could with our joined hands. I nudge Carlos's shoulder and he wakes, starting up, and he stares in open mouthed shock when he sees that I'm awake.

"Oh my God…" he breathes, hand covering his mouth in shock.

"Hey." I say, smiling slightly. I'm glad to see he's okay.

"You're alive." There's tears in his eyes, but he's desperately holding them back.

I sit up slowly, and his hand comes to rest on my back, helping me up. I touch his cheek. "Yeah. Carlos…. Why didn't you clean these? They'll get infected."

"Leave it to you to be concerned about me as the first thing you do after being stabbed." But he's smiling, happy that I'm okay. My hand still rests on his face, and he isn't moving away. I drop my hand slowly, and ask, "What happened?"

"Vaas was killed by you, and then you passed out after cutting me free. I grabbed you, used my shirt to bandage the stab wound, and ran for it. I got the both of us to a car, and drove to a boat, and then drove us home. Pagan is downstairs, keeping watch. He helped me out, with cleaning your hair and your wounds and what not."

He's blushing as he recalls this, clearly embarrassed about some memory. It probably involves my pants, or lack of them.

"Go get a bowl of warm water, a clean cloth, and some bandages for me. Some butterfly bandages too please." He nods, confused, but runs off.

I take a look at myself as he runs off. I'm in just my black underwear and Carlos's huge shirt, and my left shoulder feels painful and heavy. I pull the collar of the shirt away enough to see the thick layers of bandaging covering my shoulder, and that is when I noticed the needle mark in my forearm. I clearly had an IV in for a while.

Carlos returns and sets the items down on the small table next to the bed. I swing my legs out of bed and stand, and Carlos touches his hands to my waist, his calloused fingers brushing the hint of bare skin where my shirt has ridden up. When he's certain that I won't fall, he lets go and sits back down in the chair he was originally on.

I dip the cloth into the warm water and wring it out, and I gently dab at the various cuts along his face. He lets me, his face calm and relaxed. His one hand is brushing my knee, and the other is on my waist still, he hasn't let go. Clearly he also hasn't noticed, or he would be blushing himself stupid right now. I finish cleaning the cuts to my satisfaction and butterfly bandage the one over his eyebrow.

"How's your shoulder feeling?" Comes his question. I'm examining the torn flesh of his hands and wrists. Gently, I press my cloth to the worst of them.

"I'm okay. My shoulder is sore and it feels heavy though." He nods in understanding, and watches as I wrap the cuts on his right hand, his left isn't nearly as bad. I repeat the process on his left arm, which has been ripped open bad enough to require stitches. I start to stitch his arm wounds closed, and he winces, tightening his hold on my waist.

"You can hold onto me as tightly as you want."

He nods, burying his face in my belly, and he allows me to stitch his left arm wound closed. I do so quickly, and he whines in pain into my abdomen. I finish quickly, and wrap the newly stitched wound that laces across his forearm in bandages. He looks up, letting me go as he does so.

"I thought we were going to lose you. If it hadn't been for Pagan, I might've."

I tell him to take off his shirt and he blushes, but does so. He tries not stare at my exposed legs either, but fails miserably at that too. I hang my head at the whip lashes across his chest, but I clean them dutifully.

He winces when I press gently on the worst one, and I nod. I finish cleaning it and wrap that one as well, then I check his back for any cuts. There isn't any. Good. I sit back down on his lap, and nestle into his bare shoulder. His hand in on my waist, thumb gently stroking the fabric of my borrowed shirt.

"What did Pagan do?"

"The guy became a freakin' doctor. Don't know how, just calmly sewed you back up and wrapped it, then commanded me around to get this and that. He also made me inject you with morphine. You were asleep for 3 days. But the next thing I knew, you were in one of my clean shirts, a clean pair of underwear, and he had washed your hair in a bucket." He shakes his head in disbelief. "I don't know how he does it."

I yawn in response. He looks at me, then picks me up and lays me back down in bed. "Get some more sleep. I'll…" he yawns hugely. "I'll be here." I pat the bed space beside me.

"Come to bed. You need to sleep too."

He blushes, hesitates, but removes his bandanna and boots, and climbs in next to me, now dressed in only his pants. I cuddle as close as my hurt shoulder will allow, and enjoy his surplus of body heat. He gently sets his bandaged hand on my waist, and sighs, slowly allowing himself to relax down next to me.

When I wake up, it's a peaceful waking. Carlos is still next to me, hand on my hip, face close to mine. We are sharing the same pillow, and his warm breath is brushing my forehead each time he exhales. I smile softly at his relaxed face, and jerk in pain when I can feel my shoulder throbbing. It continues, and is rapidly getting worse.

I roll onto my back and it throbs so bad that I bite through my lip, letting out an agonized groan of pain. Carlos sits up immediately, his sleepy eyes widening at the blood streaming down my face and the way my body is wracked with pain. He scrambles out of bed and bolts out of the room, and I can hear him stomping down the stairs. I hear Pagan's concerned voice, and then Carlos's frantic one yelling, "Where is the Morphine!? Dammit! Fucking hell…. There it is!"

I hear his footsteps slamming back up the stairs, and then he appears in my hazy vision.

His voice is distorted, and all I can make out is, "…Hang on…. Gwen…" Then a prick in my arm and the pain starts to recede, almost immediately. Once it is down to a point when I can bear it, I sigh, and realize my mouth is bleeding. Carlos sighs, his head hanging down in relief, and he caps the needle he had injected me with.

"Fucking hell." He says, and he grabs a clean cloth from the nightstand and dips it into the bowl of, now cold, water from when I cleaned his wounds. He wipes the blood away from my mouth, and helps me sit up slowly.

I allow him to examine the cut, and he shakes his head when he notices that I just split my lip deeply.

"We need to change the shoulder bandage." He says.

"Yeah." I agree and I allow him to strip my shirt off gently, wincing as the action of raising my arm over my head pulls on the healing flesh of my stab wound. He blushes as he tosses the shirt onto the bed, but starts to unwrap the bandages covering my shoulder. I notice that I have my sports bra on… I had been wearing a different one earlier. This one is red…

"Um… Carlos?"

He jerks, noticing the awkward tone in my voice, but keeps unwrapping the slightly bloody bandages.

"Yeah? What's up?"

I clear my throat, but I ask it anyway. "Who… who changed my clothes?"

"Errrr… why?"

"Because my undergarments were changed." I say, turning my head away with the blush.

"…. Um…. I…. I d-did." He admits, in a very small voice that makes me think of a five year-old admitting to stealing a cookie out of the cookie jar.

"Uhhhh….. ummm…. Carlos…." I stutter, not quite sure what to do with this information.

"I had my eyes closed!" He splutters out, now so red that he resembles a tan tomato.

I sigh in relief and watch as he pulls off the last of the bandages. I'm still blushing and Carlos is as well, and I notice that he is still only wearing his pants. He doesn't seem to care though, and he just examines the wound, making sure that it isn't infected and is healing well. He seems satisfied with the results, and gently spreads some sort of ointment made out of crushed plants over it. It burns at first, but then smooths out into a soothing, cooling balm that eases the burning pain of the wound. I gasp at the sensation, and he smiles at the reaction.

"I didn't know if that would help much, but I guess so. Pretty cool, huh? We used to use it for puncture and bullet wounds. It helps as a pain reliever." He's still smiling as he rewraps the wound, and I watch his face contort into focus as he tries his best to make sure that it is wrapped correctly.

"How did you learn to make it?" I ask, now curious. I didn't know that there were medical plants here.

"There's green leaf plants called Screw Pine all over the freakin' place here. You harvest them and crush them with the sea kelp found around here and you get your ointment. We learned that from Vaas a long time ago, when he was in one of his slightly more sane moments."

I just nod and let him finish bandaging my wound, and he finishes quickly. He slips my shirt back over my head, and gently pulls my arm through the arm hole. I wince slightly, but allow him to. Once my shirt is on, I slowly slide off the bed to stand, and he lets me. My stomach rumbles, and I flush, embarrassed.

"I vote food time." I say, smiling. He grins back, and pulls his shirt on, leaving his bandanna on the floor.

"I'm always down for food." He says, and follows me as I slowly make my way to the stairs and down to the main floor. As he escorts me down the stairs, I smile as I catch Pagan's eye. He stands up, grinning, and says,

"Ah, the sleeping beauty awakens. How do you feel, Gwen?"

"Much better now, Pagan. Thank you so much." I walk over to him, and embrace him the best I can with my one functioning arm. He stiffens in surprise, but slowly hugs me back, his arms encaging me gently, but being careful not bother my shoulder.

"You are most welcome."

I pull away from him, and look to see Carlos glaring at Pagan, absolutely seething with jealousy. I hide a snort of amusement with my arm, and head to the kitchen, going about making a bowl of cereal. Carlos joins me, staying a little closer than normal. Possessive Carlos follows me around the kitchen and plops down next to me to eat his giant bowl of cereal. I grin the entire time, but slowly eat my cereal.

Once I get back upstairs, I lay and stare at the ceiling, trying to fall asleep. It's not working, and I turn to look at the doorway. Carlos is sitting just beside the doorway, facing me, but able to hear whether or not someone was coming down the hallway.

"Carlos…" I murmur. He looks up, and his eyes soften.

"Okay." He murmurs back, and he stands up, putting his gun in the corner. He strips off his shirt and tucks himself into bed next to me. Now with my source of warmth and comfort next to me, I soundly fall asleep.


End file.
